GRACE

GRACE aims to equip European law enforcement agencies with advanced analytical and investigative capabilities to respond to the spread of online child sexual exploitation material (CSEM). Due to a large amount of CSEM circulating online, LEAs are often a bottleneck to the timely processing of such reports. Speeding up this process could enable LEAs to intervene earlier and reduce the harm to victims of child sexual abuse. GRACE employs state-of-the-art techniques to handle and process large numbers of CSEM reports effectively, enhances the privacy, safety and security aspects of developing AI models for CSEM by implementing federated learning techniques, and deploys various analytical processes to provide actionable intelligence to LEAs based on the data received.  

CENTRIC is developing several technological capabilities for GRACE, including approaches to reduce duplication, prioritise incoming data, and analyse emerging trends in CSEM. CENTRIC also leads the communication and dissemination activities; recently, Europol released a report on the guidelines for first responders in child sexual abuse and exploitation purposes as part of the project.